FBSA has built one of the largest youth baseball and softball programs in Frisco, balancing competitive play with a strong recreational foundation—learn how they continue to grow and engage their community.
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Welcome to another episode of the Sold Out podcast, where we interview league organizers across the country to share insights on running successful leagues. This is the first Sold Out podcast episode featuring a youth league, and we’re excited to highlight more youth organizations in future episodes, so stay tuned!
In this episode, we sit down with Eric, President of the Frisco Baseball and Softball Association (FBSA). Since its founding in 1984, FBSA has become the premier baseball and softball organization for youth in Frisco, Texas. The league serves approximately 2,400 participants annually, spanning ages 3U to 18U, with a strong emphasis on recreational play. FBSA offers structured league play across various skill levels—A, AA, AAA, and Majors—ensuring a place for players of all abilities. The organization partners with the city of Frisco to operate smoothly, utilizing local fields and facilities to host its spring and fall seasons. As Frisco’s growth stabilizes, FBSA is focusing on strategic marketing and community engagement to sustain and increase participation.
Eric and FBSA provide a great example of how youth sports leagues can adapt to changing community dynamics while staying true to their mission. Whether it’s through improving coaching education, reaching new participants, or ensuring financial stability, FBSA continues to grow and evolve, creating lasting experiences for young athletes in Frisco.
Below is the full transcript from this episode. The Sold Out Podcast is available on Spotify and Apple, or you can watch the entire interview on our YouTube Channel!
Tune in every other week to hear AREENA interview the country's best league organizers about their success in selling out leagues consistently.
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Lance McDonald (00:01.285)
Alright, today we have Eric from Frisco Baseball and Softball Association. Thank you for being here, Eric. So yeah, let's get going with some of the basics. Obviously located in Frisco, same as I am. But can you talk a little bit about the organization, how you got involved, who you're serving, those kind of things?
Eric Buchanan (00:18.562)
Yeah, well first Lance thanks for having me on and it's great to be here and didn't realize you were in Frisco as well so that was that's nice. Yeah, so Frisco Baseball and Softball Association or FBSA as we call it is the really the only baseball and softball league for youth sports in Frisco. We cover ages 3U all the way up to 18U and what I mean by that
is like ages three and four we have a game called blast ball which is just kind of an introductory level sport they're you know total chaos but a lot of fun getting the little guys and gals out there playing and then we work through baseball and softball kind of classic little league type dynamics from age five all the way up to 14 and then we even have you know a high school rec division which would be for kids that still want to play baseball
Lance McDonald (01:16.548)
Okay.
Eric Buchanan (01:18.352)
that might be 15U through 18U, but maybe they didn't make their high school team or they're not playing on a select or a travel team. So there's still a way to be 16 and every Saturday go play a baseball game. So we cover all those agents again, both baseball and softball. Our focus and our partnership with the city of Frisco, if I could boil kind of our mission statement down to a bumper sticker would be rec.
Lance McDonald (01:27.672)
Mm.
Eric Buchanan (01:48.314)
over select. Now we do a lot with select sports because Frisco you know called Sports City USA or whatever you want to call it and you have a lot of people and children that want to kind of elevate their game so we do have mostly on the baseball side our rec baseball is A-ball and then we also have double A leagues which in Frisco rec means that we build teams by grade school by geography
Lance McDonald (01:56.76)
Yeah.
Eric Buchanan (02:18.158)
in the city so that your teams are kind of your neighborhood teams if you will. It doesn't always work perfectly but if you looked at a roster I would say you know 75 85 percent of the roster maybe goes to the same elementary school or or two elementary schools close together. When you get to AA those are select teams where there are tryouts you take your kid to it a coach picks you know the roster and everybody agrees to whatever that
Lance McDonald (02:19.086)
Hmm.
Lance McDonald (02:22.976)
cool.
Eric Buchanan (02:48.01)
that teams rules are in terms of what the costs, how much they're going to play in tournaments beyond league, a number of factors. So I don't really think that's travel ball as you hear it, because I don't think in DFW have to travel very far to play every weekend or so much baseball around here. But it is select in the sense that a roster is selected by someone else, a coach typically. We even have some open leagues, know, the AAA, which is just another
Lance McDonald (03:02.67)
Mmm.
Eric Buchanan (03:18.124)
level of select above AA. And similar concepts on the softball side. that 3U to 18U is kind of our bandwidth for who we're serving here in the city of Frisco. You know, we primarily focus on Frisco residents or if the child's parents works for Frisco ISD or the city of Frisco, we allow those kids to play. We will sometimes take out a town team.
teams if they help us make league at a certain age group. Cuz it's never fun to have a four team league. You play everybody three times. So we will take an out of town team and kind of consider that as well. In our bandwidth of ages, it comes up to about 2400 participants a year. We play a spring season and a fall season. yeah, like tonight we're having our coaches meeting.
Rudy's in Frisco where we're going to go over, you know, any rule changes for spring baseball and softball. I'm going to hand out preseason practice schedules and times, hand out baseballs and softballs, just get ready for the year. And we will then turn around and have that same meeting in August for a fall season. So there's a lot of opportunities to play, you know, if your kids in that age range. so, yeah, I think it's a great program. got
got involved back in 2016 as a coach. have three children, my oldest my daughter, she played volleyball so I didn't get to do the softball angle. But I have two sons that are 17 and 15. They play high school baseball at Lone Star in Frisco, but they went through all the levels. Rec, A ball, double A, triple A, and now they're on their summer club team. And now that you're getting into high school, there is travel to Georgia.
Lance McDonald (05:09.145)
Yeah.
Eric Buchanan (05:17.456)
other places in Houston. you know, lot of baseball in our household as you can imagine, but no, I think FBSA has been around since 1984. I would say, and if you know anything about Frisco, if you go back to 84, even towns like Plano, vastly different than it is today. Yeah. Yeah. And I used to, you know, I used to work for a company called Learfield Sports and I would come down here
Lance McDonald (05:23.852)
Yeah.
Lance McDonald (05:39.225)
my gosh, yeah, it's totally different,
Eric Buchanan (05:47.508)
in the early 2000s for like annual budget meetings and eventually moved down here in in late 07. But I didn't even know what Frisco was in 2003. Like you just didn't go there. I didn't know I didn't even know it existed. But I do think from probably 0304 on into you know even three or four years ago the growth of Frisco was epic right. And so our growth as an organization we didn't even really have to market FBA. Like we just
Lance McDonald (05:56.532)
Right.
Lance McDonald (06:11.63)
totally.
Eric Buchanan (06:17.232)
kind of had a webpage and people found it. Every year you would add 300 more kids, you know.
Lance McDonald (06:23.192)
Is it associated with the city like Parks and Rec? Or how does that?
Eric Buchanan (06:26.05)
we partner with the city. parks and wrecks a couple as well as we have an o that's full time. Kim yo and meet with the city from practice schedules to and I've even asked the you hey, you're par this something you would w you know, do you want us that you guys handle this
We're not part of Parks and Recs. We partner with the city and therefore we kind of become an extension of the city, right? Like the things we're doing represents and reflects on the city of Frisco. So we try to keep that in mind as we go about our business.
Lance McDonald (07:14.04)
Yep. And so all the teams, all the players in general are, I was just curious about the AA, AAA. That's not age related, that's skill related within an age, right? And then when you get to like AAA, you said there's not much travel, but you said DFW. are those teams, but then you also said like you do sometimes accept teams from other cities like Plano or something. How does that work at that higher? Are they playing like?
Eric Buchanan (07:25.87)
correct.
Eric Buchanan (07:40.258)
Yeah. So like let's, yeah, let's take like 10U. Like let's say just 10 year olds. At the 10U level, we will have a 10U rec league, 10UA.
Lance McDonald (07:43.428)
for years.
Yeah.
Eric Buchanan (07:53.542)
And so that'll mostly be Frisco only teams because they're they're just families that just want to play rec and and really you know what does rec mean like it can mean a little different things for different teams but typically a rec team will play one game a week on a Saturday maybe a weeknight and they may have one night of practice during the week. So if you're playing rec your kid is going to two baseball organized activities. Now here
she may go to the batting cage on her own. mean, there's always a piece of it that's up to the parent. Double A tends to, and so therefore you can have a separate tenu double A league. The A teams and the double A will not play each other, right? They're in different strata, typically mostly by skill, right? That people have decided that, my kid needs a challenge more than recreational or A ball, so let's put them in double A. And they make a team and
Lance McDonald (08:28.526)
Sure.
Eric Buchanan (08:53.248)
And double a those teams will play one night a week or one day a week typically night because They don't play league games on the weekends because they want to go to tournaments There are some rep teams that go to tournaments, but that's really not the dynamic there But when you get to double a you tend to go to these weekend tournaments that might be in Plano the colony Melissa the Z plex, you know, I can rattle off all these facilities grapevine
Lance McDonald (09:04.652)
Mmm.
Eric Buchanan (09:23.152)
And a coach will go sign up for those tournaments pay a $600 tournament fee ask each parent to chip in the kids go play two games on Saturday, then they have bracket play on Sunday and softballs similar as well and So double a is kind of where kids start experiencing weekend tournament baseball so triple a is really the same as double a it's just better competition and higher level and
So and then you can even get to majors level which the challenge for majors teams if they're really doing it right is Then they got to travel because there are very few majors teams and so you may have to go Somewhere to a majors only tournament because how many majors teams are there in Frisco? There may be one or two You don't want to play
Lance McDonald (10:11.5)
Right. But you're hosting like the AAA as well. So you're putting that on and a coach is, then a coach comes in, they do the select process to kind of build their team.
Eric Buchanan (10:22.636)
Yeah, so.
We will have Frisco teams that move up. When I was coaching my oldest son, they did really well in AA and the governing body at the time, U-SSA, which you probably know through softball leagues and whatnot. They said, hey, you guys have won a couple of tournaments. We're kicking you out of AA and putting you in AAA. Like we didn't have a choice. It was great. The kids earned their way up, if you will. And when that happened, we couldn't play in a Frisco team.
Lance McDonald (10:48.867)
Hey.
Eric Buchanan (10:54.186)
double a league. I remember I was just joined the board. I was just a league director. It's not like I knew very much, but I remember going to the board saying, Hey, there's three or four teams that used to be double a Frisco at this. think we were 12 you at the time. Can we just create a league? We'll pay you guys. You run it just like you do every other league. and, really what we're dealing with is, you you talked about, you work with a lot of adult softball leagues and other, it's all the same, right?
you how many fields do I have? How many teams? How do I pay the umpires? You know, how do I maintain the fee? Like you have to put all that together to say, yes, we can do a league here are the costs. And, and so that created that year, a 12 you open league that was separate from double A and the reason they called open is open means triple A can play triple A cannot play in double A.
Lance McDonald (11:49.287)
I see.
Eric Buchanan (11:50.338)
But double A can go up and play in an open league. Like you can always play up, you can't play down. that's, you as you kind of scale that A double A, triple A majors.
Lance McDonald (11:54.852)
Sure, I'll down.
Lance McDonald (12:02.328)
Right.
Eric Buchanan (12:03.786)
Really the main thing for us to never lose sight of is rec over select. So we are always going to be fundamentally worried and focused on able to make sure that's a great experience. Because if it is, then maybe the kid wants to step up. And one of the things I've tried to as a coach and as now FBSA president is you get so many parents who may be thinking about, are you preparing my kid for college?
Lance McDonald (12:20.984)
Hmm.
Eric Buchanan (12:33.652)
right? The kids like 10. I really as a coach, your job is to get them ready and get them to play 11 year baseball or softball because if they actually come back the next year wanting to play, you've probably done your job like to be at age 10 or 11. And we know in kind of North Texas, it's a very competitive landscape in so many ways. And to worry about things five, six
Lance McDonald (12:48.578)
Yeah.
Eric Buchanan (13:03.536)
years down the road, the best way to solve five or six years down the road is making sure they have a good experience. Doesn't always mean winning. Make sure they have fun. Make sure they want to keep coming back for more and not get burnt out. And that's probably a difference between like an adult league and a youth league where, know, in an adult league, you kind of know who wants to play and who doesn't. Like people may be self-selected. I mean, you can still have a negative experience.
maybe your registration goes down, but really trying to think about how do I get this child to come back for another year.
Lance McDonald (13:43.141)
Yeah. So what is the relationship with you and the coaches and then the coaches and the kids that, cause this is all affecting what you're saying, right? About these kids having like a good experience. Like how does that, how do coaches get selected? Is that just sort of like they apply to, I have a team and I'm going to put it together. And then now you've got sort of this responsibility or something with this coach to work together to make sure that this experience is, is great. Or like, how does that work?
Eric Buchanan (13:53.431)
Yeah.
Eric Buchanan (14:10.382)
Yeah, so one of the things and I, you know, not just to tell you a story like when I was.
I coached my younger son at age seven, you before I coached my older son, but I started coaching his nine new team one spring. And the way I look at to answer your question, I one, I'll give you this thought and I'll fill in the blank. I don't want to look at player development, even though everybody thinks you should write. You twenty four hundred players. I do want to look at coaches coaching development because if we develop coaches better, even if it's the dad or the mom that didn't
play, but they got voluntold to coach, you know, the little league team. I think you can help those people because I grew up in a town in central Illinois, 600 people in the middle of a cornfield. We didn't even have high school baseball. So it's not like I have this pedigree of, hey, look at all my years playing, you know, look at my newspaper. I don't have that.
Lance McDonald (14:49.572)
Yeah.
Eric Buchanan (15:09.11)
And I was able to figure out systems and ways to advance teams. And yes, was I there to help my kids, my kids? Yes. But then all the other kids become your kids too. So when I think about coaching development, I always think about, I think was a good experience for me is, you know, probably around 2017, I was coaching my older son's team and we lost three games in a row. It's just wrecked baseball. So I don't want to get too error.
airborne, we lost three games in a row on double plays, like the last play of the game. Like, I mean, what are the odds, right? Like it's to the point where even though you're going in one half your brain, like it's just rec, it's just nine you, the other half you're like pulling your hair out going, what is going on?
Lance McDonald (15:43.896)
Mm.
Eric Buchanan (15:56.364)
And I remember FBSA had a coach's clinic done by a gentleman on the board, Sean Weeks, great guy. I mean, it wasn't a curriculum. It was just a one-day clinic, right? Here's some drills, here's some basic stuff, and maybe me and seven other coaches attended. And I took some notes that day and that was great, but I just remembered the guy was a nice guy and he was teaching me stuff. So I go back and I have these three double play
Lance McDonald (16:11.736)
Yep.
Eric Buchanan (16:26.388)
moments and I'm pulling my hair out the team is like one and three and I'm like what am I doing wrong and I don't know what I don't know which I think for any volunteer coach is the big crux of the problem right and it's not your day job you just don't know so I remember I called Kim up I said hey that Sean Weeks guy that that did the clinic is he still around she's like yeah yeah I mean he's got a day job I said well
Lance McDonald (16:43.714)
Yes.
Eric Buchanan (16:56.26)
Can I call him and like take him to lunch and just pick his brain because I was I was at that point right I needed I needed help and she's like, here's his number and she didn't think anything of it. So I call him introduce myself. I said I know it sounds crazy. I'm just trying to do this team the right way Can I buy a sandwich someday and he said yeah today like let's meet for lunch today. So I You know left the office went met him sat there probably for two hours and just
I can't even remember all the stuff. I remember some things he told me. But I think it was maybe a therapy session I needed at the time. It was also somebody on the board that had been through the stuff. So when I start going, hey, this is what hurts. This is what I can't do or I'm struggling with. Baseball and softball are great games that you never know at all. You're constantly learning.
Lance McDonald (17:34.668)
Yeah.
Eric Buchanan (17:55.936)
And so what I want to do moving forward is get to a place where our league directors, our coaches are coaching the coaches and providing advice. And some of it is, here are great drills. Here's how to talk to parents. Cause that can be fraught with peril for a lot of people. You know, you're a volunteer coach and some parents in your ear and you're like, Hey, I'm not getting paid like heck with this. And then we lose a coach and then 12 kids.
Lance McDonald (18:22.179)
Brad. Yep.
Eric Buchanan (18:25.84)
you know, don't have a team, right? So how do you build? And I think it's a little bit of a curriculum. don't mean it's got to be a 20 page handbook, but I think there's got to be some structure of, you're a coach, here's some great ways to attack practice. Here's great ways to talk to parents. Here's, I mean, I'll give you an example. I've had coaches, I've been a league director before, and it'll be rec baseball. And they'll say, well,
this parent's giving me a hard time. Like why do give you a hard time? Because I always put their kid in the outfield. I'm like, why do you always put their kid in the outfield? And this might be Lance 8U coach pitch, right? Coach is pitching, it's 8U. Nobody can catch or throw the ball. Even the good teams, like they're awful, right? And, but they'll say, well, this parent's giving me a hard time. I'm like, why are you always putting them in the outfield? And say, well, he's just not very good. I like, I get it. He's not very good. Awesome. You have, with your scouting eyes,
the eight-year-old's not very good. I'm like, take an inning or two and put them at third base. It's like, well, why third? That's an infield. I go, because even your best player can't make the throw from third to first and eight-year-old with any regularity. You know what I mean? Like, put your best defenders at first and second so you get those easy balls and you get your outs. But you got to learn how to give a little to just placate some things because you're at an age
where every parent is worried to death that their kid's not good enough. And so I think, like to me, you can build.
some coaching for the coaches of these are the complaints you're going to get. These are how people are going to feel like start managing expectations, start having a little strategy to head it off at the pass. And then they'll think you're like the greatest coach in the world. So, you know, from that kind of managing parents to practice plans, ball-based backup, whip around the diamond drills, all this kind of stuff to giving them your resources online.
Eric Buchanan (20:34.384)
baseball Twitter or baseball X I guess now is a phenomenal thing. just I feel like the things that I'm
Lance McDonald (20:34.787)
Right.
Lance McDonald (20:39.62)
Right.
Eric Buchanan (20:46.126)
You know, we've been going through a lot of organization and kind of the business side of FBSA, getting some things organized and where we want as it relates to marketing and sponsorship. But this coaching the coaches and providing some kind of platform or curriculum that they can lean on and then having the people in the league director roles to, you know, really help say, hey, it's going to be okay. Cause I think when you're coaching at seven, eight, nine and ten,
Lance McDonald (21:13.472)
Sure.
Eric Buchanan (21:16.08)
and you don't know what you're doing for most. And most of our coaches, the coaches that played college baseball, they're more at the club teams where they get paid. A lot of those coaches will get a stipend of five to 10 grand and they will be at a club team that's maybe 12-year-old or older where in their mind, these are the kids that really want to play baseball or soccer. That's great.
Lance McDonald (21:18.307)
Right.
Eric Buchanan (21:46.01)
But we gotta get people from seven, eight, nine to 12 and 13. Otherwise we just keep the funnel keeps falling apart.
Lance McDonald (21:55.279)
Yeah, yeah. there's a big, for the player experience, for the kid experience, big focus on coaches as this sort of linchpin that bring it all together and the practice sessions and all that. And so you think about how do I provide the resources for them? You have this once a season meeting that you're about to have, right, with those coaches, and then think about what else you can do. That makes a lot of sense on.
on player experience. How does growth happen in a space like this?
10 teams and you want to develop it out and you want to have 20 teams or 30 teams? How does it like, you know, in the adult space, right? You've got maybe a group of friends and one person's like, let's do this. And then, and then you'll have like free agent pools. So somebody moves to the area. They're new, they're 25. They want to meet some people. They sign up as a free agent. They get placed onto a team. So it's like, those are these mechanisms for new teams to form and for growth to happen. How does that look, you know, at, at, um,
in your organization, that change over time or by level as well?
Eric Buchanan (23:02.496)
Well, I think if you don't do...
anything proactively to market registration or to grow to your point. The funnel is wide at ages like, you know, the three and four U blast ball is more of an activity for kids. It's not like nobody's really keeping score, but that's, that's kind of like, Hey, we're getting you used to the idea of going to the ballpark. so the funnel can be pretty wide there. I think, you know, six, seven, eight, and nine U it's that's where a lot of kids
kids are coming and going, all right, I want to play baseball. mean, imagine most mom and dads grew up with Little League baseball or softball. So they run to Dick's Sporting Goods and they buy a bat and they get a glove and that it's almost like a it's like a rite of passage, right? I mean, I can remember being a kid and going and getting that gear every summer for my eight game Little League season. That was only eight games long in the Midwest, but it's it's that dynamic. So what we are trying to
Lance McDonald (23:55.095)
Eric Buchanan (24:05.584)
And what we are doing is, think in the past, if you just put registration on the website and Frisco was adding 20,000 residents a year, that kind of took care of your growth. And it would get to the point where Ed Taylor's on our board and he would talk about in like 2006, he'd go to the city be like, we need more fields. Like look at all these kids, we need more fields. Here's the numbers, here's. So we've kind of gotten through that massive Frisco growth phase.
I mean, there's still going to be growth in Frisco. There's a lot of developments, but it's not going to be the next 10 years. I do not think will be like the last 10 to 15 years. So how do you do it? We have to market registration more and keep trying to catch the kids were missing. So the last three years, we've been more aggressive with paid social media campaigns. We do yard signs and a lot of youth leagues do. And what we've seen is
Lance McDonald (24:37.22)
sure.
Lance McDonald (24:58.917)
Hmm.
Eric Buchanan (25:05.42)
you know, not 20 % growth, but we've seen like four to seven percent growth, which means we're not going backwards. Because if you look, I think Frisco FISD's enrollment plateaued last year. It didn't grow for the first time, like ever seems like. So that's kind of telling you what's happening, right? I think FISD is allowing out of school district enrollment now. I may botch the terminology.
Lance McDonald (25:18.947)
Mm.
Lance McDonald (25:23.8)
Yeah.
Eric Buchanan (25:35.352)
on that but you could be in a different city and enroll in FISD that usually is a sign that we are plateauing and so the other thing I'm working on is if you look at Frisco and I think I think this is right for someone like me to think about is
Lance McDonald (25:39.492)
Okay.
Eric Buchanan (25:57.816)
I've been working with like the Independence High School coach, Josh Harden. His kid made one of our all-star teams and the east side of Frisco, demographically, is different than the west side. And it's culturally different and you don't, know, cricket's maybe a bigger sport to the parents than baseball. But I think kids need to play all kinds of sports. And I had one of Josh's incoming freshmen played on my
younger son's team and talking to him about you know how do we get more participation in those parts of town because like at the high school level of independence I think only two freshmen went out for baseball this fall.
They'll have enough numbers to have a JV and a varsity team, that you can't keep having freshman classes and two. So talking to Josh and then some of the other coaches over on that side of town about, hey, can we do some clinics like in the age range of eight you to 12 you get kids fired up about baseball and softball? Because it's the same problem for most sports and candidly it impacts other sports as well. I just I don't have the bandwidth to
focus on swimming and football and everything else, right? And, you know, in talking with these coaches, I can't help you for next year's freshman class, but maybe I can start working on the freshman class three years from now. And I think that's something that appeals to me. Not only if we do that right, will we grow FBSA registrations over the next two to four years? Absolutely. But
Lance McDonald (27:29.347)
Yep.
Eric Buchanan (27:43.406)
will that have a residual effect that benefits the high schools five years from now? I think it could. And I think you got at least try that. I mean, if it doesn't work, then we're just going to where it looks like we're going to. I just, don't think that's what I want to see happen. I don't think that's what a lot of people want.
Lance McDonald (28:02.167)
Yeah. Yeah. So you mentioned clinics as a, I guess, as a way to get people sort of. Can you, yeah, can you talk more? Is that, is that, that the, is that a way to sort of get somebody? Cause I have a, a six year old son and we've had him play a little bit of baseball. He wasn't super into it. He likes rock climbing. Um, when I think about, you know, I played little league growing up. I would love for him to do it as well. Some sort of team sport and all that. What's, what's the way to get.
Eric Buchanan (28:21.311)
Hahaha
Lance McDonald (28:30.072)
you know, someone like me who has a kid but they're not quite, you know, like, is our clinics like low friction, really easy, one day things to go out and just sort of like get some experience and reps and then maybe you find some people to play with or am I thinking about that wrong?
Eric Buchanan (28:45.646)
I think you're thinking about right and I think it you have to if you're going to do a clinic you start with the end in mind like what what do I want the result of this clinic to be so
You know, if we have a group of kids that are six, seven, eight, that kind of your son fits into. I want a clinic then that's more fun. That's kind of saying, Hey, here's baseball. You know, it's kind of dangling the carrot, right? Saying, Hey, this is pretty cool. So would you be doing hardcore drills? And would I want to be like coaching your son on the right glove angle? No, that that would probably kill it for him early on. It'd be more of, you know, Hey, hit some balls.
Lance McDonald (29:15.864)
Yep.
Lance McDonald (29:23.778)
Yeah.
Eric Buchanan (29:28.88)
watch how far they go, you know, we'll do some running race like yeah, we're gonna run a little but maybe they're like relay races with a base. mean, you just you create drills that are more fun competition and because what's your son's name by the way? Mason. mean, I want Mason to get in the car and go hey dad, that was pretty cool.
Lance McDonald (29:43.074)
Mason.
Eric Buchanan (29:49.166)
And it's like, okay, you we can maybe do another one or, would you just want to get on a rec team later on? You know, cause you're just trying to get them to like, Hey, you get to wear your uniform, you get a cap. It's fun. mean, that's, those are the things I think about. So then I think you can have a clinic that's more into skill development and you can have a clinic for coaches trying to teach them how to do drills. So what do you want out of the clinic? So you can have multiple.
Lance McDonald (29:55.906)
Yeah, exactly.
Eric Buchanan (30:19.12)
things like this. And then you can target by parts of the city, like, you know, where am I trying to get more participation? Because if I get four or five masons, you know, interested in it, what do they start doing in the park next to their neighborhood while they start playing wiffle ball and things like that? And now, now it's, it's like social media going viral. So
Lance McDonald (30:20.053)
Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lance McDonald (30:41.486)
Yep.
Lance McDonald (30:47.193)
Yep.
Eric Buchanan (30:48.334)
I think those all of that development and then you know for instance my oldest 17 is a junior he's committed to Dallas College to play baseball junior college but if you're paying attention to what's happening and
Lance McDonald (30:51.756)
Thank
Lance McDonald (31:01.444)
Cool.
Eric Buchanan (31:07.052)
you know, roster size and NCAA and the Vanderbilt quarterbacks. You know, he got an injunction so that time in junior college does not count against your NCAA eligibility. You know, now that means my kid can play college baseball for six years, which scares me to death on my checkbook. But I think there's a place for FBSA to have and maybe those are podcasts or it's not really a clinic. Maybe you go into a restaurant, you
Lance McDonald (31:25.358)
Haha, yeah. That's live.
Eric Buchanan (31:36.928)
invite 100 people in and you bring in a couple speakers to talk about, hey, your kid's 15, this is what college, because landscape looks like. Because in a market like Frisco, if you play enough baseball, you're probably decent. You may never go pro. You may not go division one, but there's always a place to play in college. And you have parents with the education level, the means that if that's what the kid wants to do, how do we help them find
way and navigate that. So my mind can go through like five or six tranches of target audiences that we need to get clinics, education, sampling, you know, whatever it is and how do we do that and that's I think that's the challenge for the next couple years of building that out.
Lance McDonald (32:24.546)
Yep.
Lance McDonald (32:29.944)
That was going to be my next question was just if you think about where you're trying to go in the next few years, what's number one objective? If you could just do this one thing, you would feel good. Everything else would fall into place. Or is there two or three things that you really want to do? And then what's preventing you? What's the challenge of getting it done?
Eric Buchanan (32:51.502)
I think the number one thing we've done is
become financially stable and be solid and work with, you know, and for me, just having only been in this two years is learning the role. You know, the ramp up was a little overwhelming at first and making sure my constituents, everything from the city to, you know, partners. Probably the second major thing that trying to do is add another full-time person to handle marketing functions.
And when I say that everything from registration, social media, sponsorship, I mean, I have a background in collegiate sports marketing and sponsorship. And so it's, I look at if I can get a few more partners and we do have some like Dix, Rudy's, we've had some interests from some banks. like, and we do have a big audience of 2400 families in Frisco. Like that, that is a great platform for a company to say, Hey, let's do some
things. So if I can find those partners and have that person building out infrastructure from marketing to communications to some sponsorship programs, cover the costs financially, then we can grow more registrations. And then we move into really maybe step three, which is growing the game.
And growing a game gets into developing coaches, getting more Masons to play, going into parts of the city where maybe baseball isn't number one, and we're not going to make it number one, but let's move it up from seventh to fourth or whatever. Let's make inroads and let's take the game to as many people as we can. And then I think it's not necessarily in our mission statement, but I think if
Lance McDonald (34:47.492)
Sure.
Eric Buchanan (34:52.466)
BSA does things right and grows the game, grows the love for the game, we are literally supporting our high school programs because we're what's feeding into high school baseball and softball.
And that's true for any youth sport. mean, Frisco youth soccer, Frisco football league, whatever. I mean, if they do a good job, then more kids, when they get to the high school level, want to participate. having raised three teenage kids, kids nowadays really need, it doesn't have to be sports, it can be whatever, but they need an extracurricular activity. They need something positive to do with their time and to shape their identity. And I know that gets
Lance McDonald (35:30.457)
Yes.
Eric Buchanan (35:36.1)
pretty deep, these things you do now at this youth level, pay dividends later on.
Lance McDonald (35:42.585)
Yep, totally. Yeah, it's interesting to think about it from your point of view and my point of view, because it's like I have a kid who could be playing, but we're not. But it's like, what would it take for us to become? And so some of the marketing, right? mean, saw, what was it we saw? We saw an event of some sort the other day, and it was from Facebook or something, and then we went to do it. And so I could see, the marketing stuff that you're talking about, but also like really, know, because sometimes it can be like,
know, dragging him somewhere to something he doesn't want to do is a little, even if I know he is going to like it, you know what I mean? So having those really easy, low friction things to do, just like events to go to some, some Saturday, you know, morning, whatever kind of thing that's not a commitment. He doesn't have to whatever, but we'll just maybe grab a bite. We'll play a little bit. And then suddenly that I could see the spark, like, cause even for me as a parent, I'm like, how do I get him to have the spark to do something like, like baseball?
Eric Buchanan (36:36.078)
Well, I think also in, and I say in Frisco, because that's where I've lived, I don't, mean Frisco, McKinney, Plano, it's all kind of similar, but.
I think these events and for you, you're trying to sample and find out what your kid may like and he doesn't have to like it forever. If he liked baseball for six years and it was a great activity and then he exited on his own volition, that's fine. I think just from a baseball standpoint that if there's any dad or mom that's like, I love the game. I don't care if my kid's all world, but I just would love him to have an experience. Go play catch, which is, you know,
Lance McDonald (37:20.194)
Yeah.
Eric Buchanan (37:21.836)
I used to do a thing with and granted this was back when the boys were You know seven you and I knew but it was I guess I was Lying in a way, but I would take them out to one of the Frisco parks. I would say hey, we're gonna we're gonna throw or play catch and I want to hit pop-ups to you and You know if you can go to like quick trip and remember like the I see is like the different 57 flavors of well
If you pick one flavor or nine and put it in a medium cup, it's the same $2, right? It doesn't really matter. But I would tell them for every ball you caught, I would give you another flavor in your cup. And if you only caught one ball, you only got one flavor. So then their minds are like, I got to get all these flavors because they love when they had 28 different colors in that see-through glass. I mean, they thought they had something, right? It's the same 12 ounces. didn't. But it became this
Lance McDonald (38:01.699)
Hahaha
Yeah.
Lance McDonald (38:18.094)
Yeah.
Eric Buchanan (38:20.304)
of to your point of, and I think you're right, like it's kind of just time with dad or mom where, all right, we're gonna go do an activity that they don't even realize is building skills, building athleticism.
Lance McDonald (38:26.978)
Yeah.
Eric Buchanan (38:36.974)
maybe building a love for a game. But your big thing is this wonderful distraction of, hey, when we get done here, we're gonna go get lunch, we're gonna go to the quick trip, and maybe you get X if you have a little fun competition. Because the kid's not gonna lose, right? I mean, he's just gotta catch one to get to Slurpee. And if he catches five, and so, and I remember we did that so many Saturdays or weekends, so many times.
And then after a while, I finally just like tell my wife, I'm like, I think I'm lying to my kid, because they get the same 12 ounces and they haven't caught on yet, but it was okay. It was fine. yeah. And, and, and they remember like, Hey, remember when you used to hit us pop-ups and we'd get all the flavors, you know, now there's 17. Now I can tell them like, yeah, you know, that was a scam, right? But it's, they don't care. It's all good. So find those things. I think you're on the mark there of,
Lance McDonald (39:14.34)
Yeah, as long as they're into it,
Lance McDonald (39:29.604)
Thank
Eric Buchanan (39:36.858)
know, make it Saturday time with dad and go do something physical like throw or catch or throw a football or whatever. And then, you know, just go get a bite. I mean, that's you'll be trust me, I'm older now. It's like you'll be craving that time back for sure.
Lance McDonald (39:43.897)
Yep.
Lance McDonald (39:54.213)
Sure, Yeah, it makes sense. All right, I think we're going to come up on time a little bit here. Are there any other kind of pieces you'd like to, or thoughts you'd like to share?
Eric Buchanan (40:05.281)
I guess I would ask you one of the things, one of the other reasons to, like for us, think add another staff person.
to do all the things I just described, but we are getting more volunteers, which is great. I have this feeling that volunteering for sports leagues or anything isn't what it was 10, 20, 30 years ago. I don't know if you run into it in some of the other leagues you talk to, but...
Lance McDonald (40:30.414)
Hmm.
Eric Buchanan (40:37.454)
Trying to understand what do need for my volunteers, which is connections, subject matter, expertise. Yeah, pitch in and do some work, but really trying to outsource the daily tasks to full-time people and using your volunteer board to kind of grow the league's network, the league's footprint, connect you to people. If you can get somebody that's good in finance, They can help you be a treasurer.
Lance McDonald (41:04.729)
Yeah.
Eric Buchanan (41:07.408)
to anything of that, like any dynamic there with other organizations where what are they doing to get more volunteers? How are they using their volunteers? I know it's kind of a vague question, but.
Lance McDonald (41:19.266)
Yeah, no, it's good. mean, like I said, most of our focus has been adult and you don't see as many of the volunteer type structures, I think. But the ones that you do see are all player driven. So it would be, I guess in your instance, parent driven, right? You have a network there of a lot of people. It's just...
Different people or different organizations have different levels of like their ability to tap into that and how like involved people are. And so I know there's differences with with adult and youth, but I imagine that's a little bit the same. Like are people sort of involved? Like they know that there's there's this like thing that they're a part of that's Frisco Baseball Softball Association, or is it just they don't even like know the name of what it is that they're they show up and maybe the dad doesn't know and the mom, you know what I mean? And so how engaged they are and then your ability to easily
communicate and pull them into whatever you need. just, I can say at least in the adult, I see some leagues where, know, it's kind of interesting how much the person who's running the league gets, these just volunteer activities out of players who they just stay late, they do whatever, they just love it versus other leagues that really have a hard time and don't have, you know, really have the opposite. So some of that's like,
I guess culture a little bit as well. Like how do you build a culture within your community where people are more or less open to helping out and pitching in.
Eric Buchanan (42:45.486)
Yeah, I could see that in an adult league.
you know, if you got 10 teams, who are your top seven or 10, almost like influencers, right? The people that pull the teams together, the people that just would never want that league to end, you know, can you pull them together into some kind of board and say, not trying to create work, but how do we grow this? And, you know, and, and I think, you know, for adult leagues, they are going to age out of playing, you know, cause physically at some point you're just like, all right, I'm going to stop sliding.
Lance McDonald (42:54.008)
Right. Yep.
Lance McDonald (43:15.46)
Okay.
Eric Buchanan (43:17.328)
to second base or stop playing soccer. And then it's like, well, then there's this next step for you. And I think we do that a little bit. A lot of times our former coaches, when their teams age out, they've maybe volunteered a little, but now they don't have a son to coach or the sons on the high school team, which is kind of cruise control for parents, relatively speaking. You know, then it's a chance to step up and do a little more with FBSA and still be a part. So I think you just have to look
people's like kind of lifespan around the sports or the activities they like and say hey here you're an athlete and a player here you're a coach and then maybe here you're like you know more the wise men on the board kind of
Lance McDonald (43:54.243)
Yeah.
Eric Buchanan (44:06.614)
So no, I appreciate you having having me on and it's great discussion and You know if you ever need anything, let me know
Lance McDonald (44:10.563)
Yeah.
Lance McDonald (44:14.787)
Awesome. Yeah, thanks for time. think this was a good episode and hopefully people get something out of it. Thanks, sir.
Eric Buchanan (44:19.746)
You bet. Thanks Lance.
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